Atul Belur

Atul Belur is a Master's graduate in Computer Science from San Diego State University. He is a developer and exploratory data analytics and visualization enthusiast.

During his time at the nonprofit investigative news organization, Inewsource, he worked as part of an investigative news team, observing how aspects and knowledge of computer science can greatly enhance and contribute towards better reporting and how data science and data manipulation can touch people's lives with better and more relevant information.

His Master's Thesis project, Breadcrumbs, is a prototype in marrying recommendation in artificial systems with conceptual knowledge of the domain, rather than statistical justifiation for the choices offered by recommendation systems. His project provides a framework for data manipulation using user input of domain concepts and having agents in the code find the relevance and context of the data to help provide leads to investigate furthur on using the concept of Emergence in complex adaptive systems. The project is currently in beta testing.

Aside from this, he has experience in teaching and building class curriculum in the areas of Human Computer Interface (HCI) and web/mobile app development.

He helped to build a web/mobile app that uses geo location to gather information on campus events in the vicinity of the user or searched places and display it. The news app called Aztecast is based on the Ushahidi open source platform and services the San Diego State University campus population.

His passions: Photography, writing, astronomy and pondering on how data can affect the way of life in developing nations.